Staple fibers hold a large share of the global fiber market, with last year’s output comprising about 57 million tonnes in a total market size of almost 106 million tonnes. Staple fiber dynamics, however, have been slower than in the filament business, as their position in the market has continuously lost weight in recent decades. …

Filament growth rates have been faster for most of the almost four decades shown in the next chart than the world fiber market movement. Their long-term growth rate amounts to 5.6%, although the expansion in the most recent three years was at slowest pace in modern textile industry. The deceleration was related to economic uncertainty, …

Most of the top-10 exporting countries lifted their shipments in value terms in 2018 (Figure 1). The recovery of Chinese exports continued with the total value increasing 4 percent to US $277 billion. However, value-added garment ex­ports remain about 15 percent below their peak 2014 level, without any significant movement over the past three years. Knitwear and woven apparel exports remain among the top-10 Chinese export categories, albeit gradually losing weight as the Chinese economy continues to diversify.

The world economy started off on an optimistic note in 2018, following growth in manufacturing and trade the previous year. But optimism gave way to a downturn from midyear, as the International Monetary Fund revised down its 2018 projections for most advanced economies and predicted significantly lower growth expectations for 2019.